Effects of Ambient Noise and Nearby Talkers on a Face-to-Face Communication Task

Abstract

From 1 to 5 talker‐listener pairs, talkers seated shoulder‐to shoulder on one side of a table with listeners on the other, communicated word lists in conditions of quiet and ambient thermal noise levels of 65, 75, and 85 dB. Each talker read one word at a time to his listener‐partner, who repeated back each word for verification by the talker. Talker—listener pairs were instructed to maintain an accuracy of 90% or better. For the lower ambient levels the speech level of a central pair increased about 5 dB for an additional 10 dB of noise or for each doubling of the number of pairs around them. The rate of utterance decreased with noise but showed no clear cut pattern of change as the number of additional talkers was varied. Accuracy of communication was, on the average, 94% and was never below 84%. Communication errors defy simple description but in general (1) for a constant noise level, increasing the number of talkers results in increasing errors; and (2 for 3 or fewer talker‐listener pairs, percent error does not increase until the ambient‐noise level reaches 85 dB.